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OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

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Re: OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

#221

Post by andrew_ »

darkerside wrote: post #137
andrew_ wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally directed comments aren't typically welcome here. Attack the topic or opinion, not the person.

I wasn't attacking the person, rather the style of argument being made. Ironically, your follow up comment does point out the typical HN rush to judgment, a much more literal ad hominem.

ad hominem? look in the mirror friend.

> So they can shrink from and deny any possible conflict.

you quite literally insinuated negative motive and action to follow directed towards an individual using a pronoun. take some personal responsibility.

Re: OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

#222

Post by jampekka »

philipov wrote: post #217
jampekka wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's a lot of leeway on how to maximize the shareholder profit and on what timescale. But in any case the decisions can't be justified by e.g. morals, especially if it means monetary loss (unless no shareholder complains of course).

It's just a matter of how you frame it. The view to take is that alienating customers and employees by violating e.g. morality, is not in the best interests of shareholders. Saying that the long term value of the company is best served by avoiding banditry is not only within management's discretion, it happens to be true. You can't even point to successful companies that treat consequences from violating laws or mora…

That's still profit maximizing. If they can't argue the "moral" decision on profit rationale it's illegal.

LLCs are amoral by design. It can be argued that this amorality can result in good outcomes when e.g. regulated proprerly. But that doesn't make the LLCs themselves moral actors.

Mistaking companies for moral actors results in folly like letting them regulate themselves.

Re: OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

#223

Post by philipov »

jampekka wrote: post #222
philipov wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a matter of how you frame it. The view to take is that alienating customers and employees by violating e.g. morality, is not in the best interests of shareholders. Saying that the long term value of the company is best served by avoiding banditry is not only within management's discretion, it happens to be true. You can't even point to successful companies that treat consequences from violating laws or mora…

That's still profit maximizing. If they can't argue the "moral" decision on profit rationale it's illegal. LLCs are amoral by design. It can be argued that this amorality can result in good outcomes when e.g. regulated proprerly. But that doesn't make the LLCs themselves moral actors. Mistaking companies for moral actors results in folly like letting them regulate themselves.

You are arguing against a strawman. No one ever said that corporations are moral actors. You said that companies are not allowed to have a mission other than chasing profits. As has already been pointed out, OpenAI is not a for-profit corporation. These are a thing that really exists, and as the name implies, they are not obligated to show any profits. You are also conflating 3 things: Profits, The Best Interests Of Shareholders, and The Value of the Corporation. These are all distinct things, not synonyms. The thing that the corporation will consider to be the value it maximizes is something you will find in its prospectus. The prospectus is what lays out the promises the corporation makes to its shareholders. Nonprofit corporations specify their mission, and while their officers are still expected to act as good fiduciaries, this does not mean maximizing profit.

Re: OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

#224

Post by baking »

93po wrote: post #189
baking wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam Altman claimed to have written a $375 million check from his own money to invest in Helion Energy. Maybe when all the lawsuits happen we will know more about his investments.

Like a literal check, or a proverbial check where his illiquid assets serve as collateral to a bank who writes the check?

I'm not finding the quote, but he has claimed it in front of an audience. I should point out that he is Executive Chair of Helion so I assume he still has some control over how the money is spent.

  One of those bets is on the fusion power startup Helion Energy, into which he’s poured more than $375 million, he told CNBC in 2021. The other is Retro, to which Altman cut checks totaling $180 million the same year.

  “It’s a lot. I basically just took all my liquid net worth and put it into these two companies,” Altman says.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069523/sam-altm...

Re: OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

#226

Post by pseudalopex »

tsimionescu wrote: post #54
gumballindie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

He has been accused on Twitter of "climbing in her bed non-consensually" when he was 13 (and she 4). She has also explicitly said she doesn't actually want legal action for "experiences between a baby child and a tween child", again suggesting that anything that happened only happened when he was a child. She also has a history of mental illness.

Annie accused Sam of sexual abuse in those words. And even the tweet about him climbing into her bed implied sexual acts followed. She didn't say rape as far as I know. But she didn't say only climbed into bed either.

1 billion people have a history of mental illness. And post traumatic stress disorder is a common consequence of sexual abuse. Does she have a history of delusion?

Re: OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

#227

Post by darkerside »

belter wrote: post #159
darkerside wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of a point I wasn't making, I have to ask if you actually read the article you shared. It describes claims of people saying the Eskimos have 9, 48, 100, or 200 words for snow, and points out these are all in conflict. It then goes on to remar that even if it were true, it's understandable since snow is a huge part of their culture, which reinforces the point that I _was_ making. Hardly a debunking!

"...The prevalence of the great Eskimo snow hoax is testimony to falling standards in academia, but also to a wider tendency (particularly in the United States, I'm afraid) toward fundamentally anti-intellectual "gee-whiz" modes of discourse and increasing ignorance of scientific thought..." "...Some time in the future, and it may be soon, you will be told by someone that the Eskimos have many or dozens or scores or…

He yammers on for pages about the poor quality of sources that make the claim, and then utterly fails to provide any sources that dispute it. He also says that it would make so much sense as to be "mundane and unremarkable".

> Among the many depressing things about this credulous transmission and elaboration of a false claim is that even if there were a large number of roots for different snow types in some Arctic language, this would not, objectively, be intellectually interesting; it would be a most mundane and unremarkable fact.

If so, the burden of proof falls on him to prove it's not the case. The whole thing comes off as a fun rant about how it's not such a big deal even if true, while never actually addressing its truthfulness.

How's this for sources? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow

> Krupnik and others charted the vocabulary of about 10 Inuit and Yupik dialects and concluded that they indeed have many more words for snow than English does. Central Siberian Yupik has 40 terms. Inuit dialect spoken in Canada's Nunavik region has at least 53, including matsaaruti, for wet snow that can be used to ice a sleigh's runners, and pukak, for crystalline powder snow that looks like salt. Within these dialects, the vocabulary associated with sea ice is even richer. In the Inupiaq dialect of Wales, Alaska, Krupnik documented 70 terms for ice including: utuqaq, ice that lasts year after year; siguliaksraq, a patchwork layer of crystals that form as the sea begins to freeze; and auniq, ice that is filled with holes. Similarly, the Sami people, who live in the northern tips of Scandinavia and Russia, use at least 180 words related to snow and ice, according to Ole Henrik Magga, a linguist in Norway.

I find it annoying that anyone would imply it's unintellectual to consider this possibility based on such an intellectually vacuous article as the one you shared.

Re: OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

#228

Post by pseudalopex »

tsimionescu wrote: post #171
gumballindie wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only happened when he was a child Between downplaying the significance of what he did and discrediting the victim i cant tell whether his followers have a similar past or simply bend over to anyone that projects power. I can understand this coming from people in countries where the cult of personality is still alive but not in the western world.

We don't know if he did anything. And what he is accused of doing is actually quite vague, and at any rate it dates since he was a child. Not a young man, not an adolescent, but a pre-pubescent child. How much can you hold against someone who possibly didn't even understand what he was doing, even assuming she is completely right that this happened (her whole family denies it).

We don't know if he did anything. But you did play down the accusations.

Most people don't infantilize 13 year olds so much. Pubescent or not. And how do you know when Sam Altman began puberty?

How much I would hold against someone would depend on what they did to make amends.

Family denial is very common. And how would they know?

We can say we don't know if he did anything without bad arguments or reducing the accusations.

Re: OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

#229

Post by airstrike »

avarun wrote: post #212
airstrike wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But since he owns them, he can do whatever he wants with them? Unless you're arguing he's forming a trust / cartel, which I don't think is the issue being debated here

He doesn't wholly own any of them though?

you don't need whole ownership to control a company, just a controlling interest

Re: OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman

#230

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

dzink wrote: post #149

A nonbinding letter of intent in 2018? That is a limited downside unlimited upside kind of risk you take to fund extreme moon shots. Boom Supersonic did the same approach with United airlines, to fund a still undeveloped supersonic Airplane. A 1M investment like this is a hedge that has capped downside, restricted to Altman's personal money, and an infinite upside that gives an incentive to the founders to succeed. A…

"A nonbinding letter of intent in 2018?"

"OpenAI does not have to buy the chips unless they meet the criteria,"

The second sentence suggests if the chips meet the criteria then the LOI is binding.

Even if, for example, there were other chips from other companies, in which Altman held no interest, that met the criteria.

The phrase "have to buy the chips" suggests more than simply a requirement to negotiate in good faith.

But if we cannot see the text of this LOI then we are all just speculating.

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